Lezgins are one of five major ethnic groups living within Azerbaijan. They inhabit mostly in the north part of Azerbaijan. Lezgins could preserve their language. The majority tends to speak with each other in Lezgi language. However, Apart from the old generation who could only speak Lezgi, the young generation knows both Azerbaijani (to get job in Azerbaijan) and Russian (to work in Dagestan). 

It is impossible to imagine human life without energy. We all use gas, oil or coal as sources of energy.  However, it is known that all of these reserves will come to an end. 

The children’s cemetery in Sumqayit is a dark reminder of the high level of children born with birth defects. The Sumgayit cemetery reveals the tragic story that was hidden for so long during the Soviet period. Dead babies don't lie.

Sudaba Allahverdiyeva  has been growing grapes in Khachmaz for many years, but she says that it is no longer profitable. The land on which she grows her grapes is not even hers, but is a remnant of state-owned farmland from the Soviet Union.

Several decades have past since breast cancer has been considered a fatal disease. Chaikhana seeks to challenge this false impression and to give voice to the women who have defeated cancer, reminding others about the importance of regular mammograms - a diagnosis which has the potential to save the thousands of lives if detected in an early stage.                            Women-Fighters.       Breast cancer: Stories of Victory! 

While Islam denies any kind of images, images on tombs in Azerbaijan are present everywhere. Accordingly, if, according to Islam, all tombs must disappear throughout time, the case of Azerbaijan is distinct; Azerbaijanis prefer to “build” memorials and mausoleums around their tombs. 

There is a tradition in the South Caucasus for a girl to be a virgin when she gets married. However, some future brides have to see a doctor to keep this tradition, thus hymen reconstruction surgery has gained popularity in recent years. 

What similarities did Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia have in the '90s? This retrospective photo story depicts the household items of the 1990s, most of which, were novel for these newly independent countries at the time, but outdated today.

Endemic corruption and human rights abuses are widespread in Azerbaijan, whose authorities’ systematic harassment, arrest, and imprisonment of political opponents has brought the Caucasian republic under international spotlight. However, still harm inflicted to animals goes undetected and remains pervasive. 

In his novel Fathers and Sons, Russian writer Ivan Turgenev dissected the growing divide between two generations - Nikolaj no longer recognizes nor understands his son Arkady when he returns to his father’s home after studying in distant and liberal St. Petersburg. The year was 1862, but it could be as well the 2017.

Somewhere in the corner of the building, I hear a cry of “Caniva Azzar” (damn you), a five-year-old boy was angrily shouting it to his father. At first, I was confused to hear such a familiar expression. For a moment I felt like I was in my motherland, Azerbaijan. But this was the waiting hall in Istanbul Airport — for the Tabriz Flight.

The USSR was rightly called the country of new cities - in its rush to build the perfect socialist industrial future, purposely-built apartment blocks, factories, and houses of culture sprung up out of nowhere to form the new conglomerate. Azerbaijan was no exception. Some now large cities were developed from these already existing, though small, villages, like Ali-Bayramli and Mingachevir; others were created from scratch, like Sumqayit. All these urban spaces share the rigid Soviet architecture and expanses of factories which attracted thousands of workers from all over Azerbaijan - and beyond. They also house thousands of displaced from Nagorno Karabakh who fled the region at the end of the open conflict in the 1990s. They are cities with little history, and their residents do not feel they totally belong to them.

It was  freezing - and snowy, icy, foggy. The road to Kandovan was covered by a thick layer of powdery snow, but as the car was hardly able to proceed, it was hard to find it charming.

Fifty-seven-year-old small-business owner Djuma Isakov is a man whose language is under threat. And with it, he fears, an entire culture.

Heydar Aliyev’s face and name are seen throughout Azerbaijan -- from billboards and offices to a mosque and even an oil pipeline. But these are more than just images of a genial, elderly man or recollections of an Azerbaijani patriot. They are meant to show citizens how Azerbaijan defines itself.

“I’ll call ANS TV.” Until a year ago, that was the threat often heard in Azerbaijan when local officials ignored street repairs ora factory wall collapsed. It was one place where many Azerbaijanis thought they could share their neighborhoods’ problems, and maybe even get results.

Orthodox Christian icons are everywhere to be found in Georgia - gazing over the shoulders of butchers cutting meat, peeking among stacks of cards in notary bureau, dangling over the windscreen on public buses and marshutkas. And a cross sway from the mirror in most cars across the country. Religious images are ubiquitous attributes of public spaces and lay bare the Georgian society’s entrenched religious belief. 

Once a year, 83-year-old Azerbaijani Bayram Allazov travels from his house a few hours outside of Baku to the hills of southern Georgia for a look back in time. From the village of Irganchai, he tries to see the location in neighboring Armenia, just three kilometers away, that he still considers home. But the effort inevitably fails.